


Less Shitty

by MadiYasha



Category: South Park
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Could be platonic, Drug Use, Gen, M/M, boys with problems, but i def wrote it w gay intents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-11-02 12:47:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10944813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadiYasha/pseuds/MadiYasha
Summary: It’s 9 pm on a school night when Stan sees the orange blur staggering outside his window.





	Less Shitty

**Author's Note:**

> I literally dreamt this and decided I needed to write it, I guess.

It’s 9 pm on a school night when Stan sees the orange blur staggering outside his   window.  It contrasts brightly against a dark, monochrome background as the edges of the scenery slowly melt away in the rain.  He turns his head and notices its short legs hastily stomp down on the slush littering the cracking asphalt, and the connection in his brain is near instantaneous.

_ Kenny’s house is a while away, what on earth is he doing out here?  _ Stan didn’t even finish the thought before his hands hitched up his window and he stepped out into the bitter elements.  

He ran toward the boy, thanking whatever deity blessed him with the legs fit for a football player and messily calling out his name in between breaths of air.  Kenny hesitated slightly when the noise cut the air, but he never stopped running.  Stan gritted his teeth and pressed forward, rain blurring his vision and cold creeping into his lungs.  It was lost on him  _ why _ he cared this much, but something about the sight of Kenny alone, in the rain, running from some unseen force made him more uneasy than he’d like to admit.

“Kenny, god damnit!” Stan nearly hissed, extending his hand to firmly shake the blond’s shoulder.  “What the fuck are you doing?!”

Kenny stopped, a slight tremble to his stance, and raised his gaze to Stan through a window of brown, dripping fur.  “Stan?”

“Dude, it’s fucking pouring.  Where are you even going?”

“I… was heading home.”

“Your house is way too far from here to keep going on foot in this weather,”

Lightning crackled and thunder shook the sky above them, and the scars it drew across the clouds made Kenny tense, clenching his teeth so hard he was sure they would shatter.

“I need to fucking get  _ home _ , Stan!” He shook his friend’s hand off of him in a sudden rage, blue eyes burning white hot.  “Not tonight!   _ I’m not fucking dying tonight! _ ”

Stan stepped back, slowly raising his hands up in a defeated gesture.  “S-sorry, man… uh…”

Kenny’s expression softened, and he lowered his clenched fists.  “No.  I’m sorry.  I just… really need to get out of here.  We can’t sit around and talk.”

Stan was quiet for a moment, and it was only when he heard Kenny’s boots splash against the ground that he spoke up again. “Hey.  Come stay the night at my place.  I can get my mom to call yours.”

There was stark silence for a moment, and the shorter boy released a sigh that sounded as if it carried years of grief with it.

“Yeah, okay.  Don’t worry about it.  I doubt they’re expecting me.”

* * *

Kenny was splayed out on Stan’s bed, wrapped in the down comforter while his parka tumbled in the dryer.  He ran his fingers through his messy blond hair and drifted in and out of existence to the cacophonous melody of Stan messing around in the kitchen.  After a few minutes of running water and dishes clanging against each other, Stan emerged in the doorway like a holy saint, steaming mug in hand and ready to fulfill the cliche to the best of his ability.

“Mom’s cool with you staying,” He half-smiled, handing Kenny the hot cocoa.  “Warm up, dude.”

Kenny eagerly took the mug, remembering fondly that Stan was the best at remembering small details about people.  Or maybe that was just with him?  Either way, he never turned down hot chocolate.  “Thanks, Stan.”

“No problem.” He replied, sitting crisscross on the floor and leaning against his dresser.

“You didn’t make some for yourself?”

“Nah,” Stan leaned up, slowly opening his dresser drawer.  “I’m not in the mood for sweets.”

Kenny frowned as soon as he saw the neck of the vodka bottle in Stan’s bare hands.  “Dude, really?  We have school tomorrow.”

“Don’t  _ worry _ about it,” He snapped.  “It’s nothing I’m not used to.”

“Sick and tired of walking your hungover ass to the nurse’s.”

“Dude, do you wanna go back out into the rain?” 

Kenny sighed.  “Whatever, man.  It just worries me, s’all.”

“Why the hell do you care so much?” Stan’s speech was already slurring, and he could see the annoyance quickly forming in Kenny’s furrowed brow.  “You binge on every drug you can find.”

He finished his cocoa dangerously fast and set it on Stan’s bedside table.  “That’s different, Stan.  I’m not addicted.”

“And neither am I,”  Stan boasted.  “I just need this shit to enjoy life, alright?  Lay off.”

“Are you even listening to yourself?”

“ _ Lay off _ , Kenny.  You’re the one who spent all fucking day letting a cat piss in your face because it gave you the goddamn giggles.”

Kenny rested his face in his palms for a moment before sighing again, defeated.  “Alright.  Sorry.”

Stan remained quiet, taking another half-hearted swig off the bottle, eyes watering slightly at how it tore into his throat like acid.

“But, you know, Stan, I’ve told you a hundred times why I do things like that.”

He tilted his head.  “What?  No you don’t.”

“I do,” He rolled onto his back, making shapes out of the lumps that festooned the ceiling above them.  “I’ve told you time and time again, that I don’t have to worry about what I’m doing to my body.  Not like you, Stan.”

“Psh, what are you, fuckin’ Superman?  I know you like to play dress up with us on the weekends, Ken, but you’re not invincible.”

“Invincible?  No.” He made his way to the edge of the bed, to the floor, to where the smell of alcohol on Stan’s breath nearly singed the inside of his nostrils, and he looked him dead in the face.  “Try immortal.”

Stan wanted to say something belligerent, he really did, but the intensity in Kenny’s eyes was dotted along the edges with what was obvious hurt, and so instead, he looked to the rational part of his drunken soul as he spoke.  “You keep telling us that.  What does it mean?”

“Don’t you ever wonder why I disappear sometimes?  Why when you’re racking your memory to explain to someone what crazy bullshit went on the other day, you’ll notice yourself one man shorter during the duration of the story?  Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Well… no, dude. Shit gets intense. We always just figured you ran away.”  
“I don’t run away, Stan.” His voice was shaking and Stan could tell, easily, that he was suppressing the rush of emotion Kenny could often be prone to.  “I fucking die, okay?  Constantly.  Things fall on me, impale me, set me on fire, decapitate me, and it _hurts!_  But you know what fucking hurts more?  When the people you care about don’t even _remember!_ ”

Stan blinked with his mouth slightly agape, and Kenny retreated to a defeated lump as he leaned dejectedly against the dresser alongside him.  Stan recognized the closed-off, emotional boy, and was certain that if he was clad in his parka, he’d have yanked the drawstrings until his face was near indistinguishable.  

“I’d die a thousand more times, though… I’d do fucking anything…”  He buried his face in his hands.  “Just for one of you to fucking remember once.”

They stayed there, in complete silence, for what felt like hours.  Stan searched everything he had for the right words to say, but his mind and body were clouded in a drunken haze that his heart couldn’t break through, no matter how sharp its sword.  He gave up keeping his lips tight for fear of his filter disappearing--and resolved that any words, in this situation, were better than no words at all.  

“Hey, Kenny…”

The boy in question raised his head up, looking over at Stan.

“You think that like, if you kept telling me about this stuff, I’d remember it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… you said I only forget when you actually die.  B-but… I mean, if you told me about it, after it happens and you..” He struggled to phrase his thoughts, but pressed on regardless. “...you  _ come back _ , I’d remember that, right?”

“I…” He shook his head.  “I don’t know.”

“I’ve remembered all those other times you told us,” He said.  “I mean, I didn’t believe you, but… I remembered. I remember now.”

“That’s… that’s true, yeah.”

Stan stood up, cautiously burying his liquor beneath the folds of clothing in his drawer.  He sloppily stumbled over to his bed, motioning for Kenny to come over.  The blond flicked the light off and watched curiously as Stan fumbled in the dark to click the switch on his star projector.

It sprang to life with a churning hum and lime green constellations swam across Stan’s popcorn ceiling, lighting up the room.  The blue backlight occasionally flickered in and out of existence. It was an old thing that his dad had reluctantly spent 50 bucks on, and Kenny had always regarded the ear-grating grinding it produced as a calming sleep aid.  He slowly climbed into bed next to his friend.

With the projector’s lullaby filling the silence in between words, Stan placed his hands behind his head and spoke again.  “Why were you so scared of dying tonight, Kenny?”

“There was lightning,” He said plainly, as if there was nothing to question about it.

“Yeah, but like, what are the odds that it’d hurt you?” Stan retorted, because there was actually a  _ lot _ to question about it.

Kenny bit the inside of his cheek, out of habit, and continued to speak.  “Right.  You  _ do _ believe that I die and come back to life, right? You’re not just humouring me?”

“It’s hard to believe. Really, it is.  But when I think about some of the shit we’ve seen… it’s actually… pretty normal in comparison?”  He saw Kenny’s eyes widen just slightly, like there was a light in them that hadn’t been awoken by anyone before.  “I don’t think you’d keep a lie going for this long, either.  That’s some Cartman level shit and you’re definitely above it.”

He pulled the covers to his nose and melted into the familiarity of its feeling.  “...Thank you.”

“Yeah.”

“The reason I was running,” He started. “The reason I was scared was because it’s not just a matter of coming back to life after I die… it’s like I’m… cursed.  With bad luck.  Imagine death a person.  Constantly following me… taunting me… striking whenever he possibly can.  How else could someone die  _ so goddamn much _ ?”

“I guess that makes sense…”

“You start to view the world differently when you live like I do,” He rolled over.  “Things aren’t just objects, concepts.  I see the world and everything in it as different ways to die.  You see your mom making food and you think ‘oh, wow! I fucking love steak!’ I see myself gasping for air on the floor because that  _ one _ piece just didn’t agree with the size of my goddamn esophagus. I see my sister crying and no one even trying to resuscitate me.”

There was quiet again, and the whir of the projector continued to fill the empty space with a sense of comfort and fullness.  Stan rolled over so that he was facing Kenny’s back, and carefully choked out “I think… I kind of understand.”

“I appreciate it, but do you?” Kenny said to the walls.  “You might sympathize, but you can’t ever empathize, Stan.”

He swallowed, and kept speaking.  “The things around me won’t kill me.  I don’t see the dew on the grass and envision myself slipping on it and cracking my skull on the pavement.  But I don’t see beauty, either.  I just see shit.

“Everything is just shit to me.  The birds in the sky, the leaves on the trees, the flowers in the grass, the words that come out of the people around me.  Maybe it won’t kill me.  Maybe I have no room to complain.  But if you could forget, just for a while, that everything around you does nothing but upset you, wouldn’t you try?”

“Of course I would!”  He suddenly turned around, taken aback that Stan would even ask such a question.  “Why do you think I get high whenever I can?  If I’m going to kill myself, I might as well enjoy doing it!”

“You get high because it makes the world seem…”

Kenny didn’t want to finish his sentence.  Suddenly he was very aware of the tears in Stan’s blue-grey eyes, and the stench of hard liquor that resonated off him, and the way he listened when no one else did.

“...less shitty.”

The subtle, near invisible tears that had been pricking the corners of Stan’s eyes had spilled over, then, and Kenny wanted to hit himself for opening wounds in Stan that he was sure the kid would rather forget.  Kenny was the only person in this world that Stan got  _ legitimately drunk _ around, and he knew from experience that the black-haired boy was much more emotional than usual when inebriated. He should have known, as soon as he saw the glint of the clear fluid under the shoddy fluorescent lighting, that he was entering shaky waters.

He gently placed a bony hand against his friend’s cheek, wiping the tears away wordlessly, and Stan choked back another tipsy sob.  “It’s not fair,” He whined.  “It’s not fair that you get to forget with no consequences, it’s not fair that I can’t complain because my life is so much better than yours,”

“Stan,” He whispered, nervously hugging the boy.  “Stop.  The worst you’ve been through is the worst you’ve been through.”

He let out an uncharacteristic squeak, and buried his face in Kenny’s chest, hugging him tight.  

“I won’t bother you about drinking anymore,” He whispered into Stan’s hair.  “Promise me you’ll try to take care of yourself, and I’ll lay off.”

He sniffed pitifully, and nodded.  “I’m sorry I’m a shit friend, Kenny.”

“Shut the fuck up, dude.” He grinned.  “You’re the only one who listens.”

Stan curled up in the blankets, wiping at his face while he spoke.  “What if I don’t remember this when I’m sober?”

“How nights have we spent with you slightly plastered?”

“Like, 24.”

“How many do you remember in detail?”

“22.”

“The two you don’t?”

“The night my mom asked us to clean the kitchen--”

“Accidentally mixed the bleach with ammonia and locked myself in the bathroom.”

“--and the night we found Shelley’s girl scout cookies and ate, like, all of them--”

“She threw the bookshelf down the stairs.  It missed you.”

“Shit, dude, really?”

“Really,” Kenny kept smiling, despite the pain of recalling those scenarios.  “Your memory could write fucking novels, no matter how drunk you are.”

Stan’s sunken heart was lifted up in an instant, and he slowly closed his already half-lidded eyes, still holding onto Kenny.  “Thanks, dude.”

“No worries.”

“Try to stay alive until the sun rises, okay?”  He hugged him tighter.  “I don’t want to forget this.”

And the projector crooned on, with the blue haze behind the stars slowly fading out, and the constellations swarmed like fireflies above them.  In the messy shapes and forms the artificial stars contorted into, Kenny saw his home.

 

“I promise.”


End file.
